Chapter 19

The Doctor tried to restrain the smile tugging at his lips as he looked at Rose's flushed face, her eyes focusing on anything but his. He didn't want to prolong her unease over what she was clearly thinking, though.

"I'm not reading your thoughts right now, Rose," he reassured her. "I couldn't just project towards you and read your mind. It doesn't work that way." Because our bond has been all but severed, the Doctor's own despondent thoughts added. "And I would never do anything that you were not completely comfortable with. If you consented to this use of telepathy, you would be the one in control and I would respect any boundaries. I wouldn't look at anything you didn't want me to see. But this is something that would require complete trust." He placed his hand gently on her shoulder, drawing her reticent eyes back up to his. "Do you trust me, Rose?"

"I..." Rose was about to say she just wasn't sure...about any of this; but that wasn't the answer she found herself giving. Her reply, though it surprised her own self, left her somehow feeling calm and certain. "I trust you."

The Doctor's eyes lit up as he grinned, slow and positively beaming. "Good," he answered simply.

With her feeling of sureness, Rose suddenly felt ready to begin right away. If this could help her regain those absent memories then she didn't want to lose any time waiting. She had already lost enough.

"Can we start this right now?" she asked anxiously.

The Doctor's smile faded. "Rose, I'm not sure if you're ready for this just yet. I think your mind still needs more time to recover before we begin. Your mind doesn't need any type of exertion this soon."

Rose set her face in a determined look. "I'm well enough to begin. I'm sure of it. The only thing that's gonna upset my mind right now is knowing I can't begin doing something that might help me recover my memories."

His Rose was ever the stubborn one. And she had a point. He was just as anxious as Rose was for her to begin recovering her memories if possible. The Doctor wasn't taking any chances, though. Regardless of how well Rose thought she was feeling, he needed to assure himself that she was ready to begin, albeit slowly. He had scanned Rose with the sonic once during the night as she'd slept, but that had been hours earlier and he needed a current evaluation before proceeding. The Doctor removed the sonic screwdriver from his pocket.

"Let me scan first to make sure you are as well as you think you're feeling, and then maybe we can start out slowly."

Rose stared curiously at the long, thin, silver and blue device held in his hand. "What is that thing?"

He paused, looking from Rose back down to the sonic. Pulling this out spontaneously was second nature to him, as natural as extending a limb. He'd not even given thought to the fact that Rose now wasn't familiar with this, either. Blimey, nothing about any of this was going to be easy. "It's...a scanning device," he supplied.

Rose narrowed her eyes in inspection of the object. "It looks more like a...screwdriver."

His grin was slightly lopsided as he hummed his agreement. "Doesn't it just?" He schooled his features again. "It's a new type of portable scanning technology, and perfectly safe."

Rose chuckled, slightly bemused. "You're just Mister Cutting Edge, aren't you?"

"Oh, that I am. And this won't hurt a bit, I assure you." The Doctor switched on the sonic and did a quick scan of Rose's neural and overall physical condition, checking the baby as well in the process. They both seemed to be doing acceptably well. There was no reason to delay the start of this as long as they took it slow.

A distant look flickered in Rose's eyes as the sonic whirred to life, but the moment quickly passed. The Doctor switched off the sonic and replaced it in his pocket. "Well," she asked, "did your screwdriver thing tell you what I already did?"

"You're well enough to proceed," he consented. "If we take this slow."

Rose untucked her legs from beneath her and straightened her shoulders. "So...what do we do?"

The Doctor moved a little closer. "Turn a little more towards me," he instructed as she complied. "That's it. Now, just take a deep breath and relax. I'm going to place my hands on your temples and concentrate."

"This is so bizarre," Rose laughed nervously.

"It's alright...trust me. Now, if there is anything you don't want me to see, just imagine putting it behind a door, and I won't look. I promise."

Rose twisted the hem of her T-shirt in her hands. "And then what?"

"And then, together, we'll look for the memories that have been damaged. All I want us to do this time is try to identify them and see their condition. Anything further right now would be too much. Later on, provided they're still there and not completely lost, I'll try to help you clarify them, a little at a time."

"You can really do that?" she questioned out loud, more in amazement than skepticism.

His face and his voice were infinitely tender, conveying not only a sense of calm but of hope. "We can do that, together. Are you ready, Rose?"

Rose drew in a bolstering breath and closed her eyes. "Ready as I'll ever be, I s'pose. Go ahead."

Gently, the Doctor placed his hands on Rose's temples, and equally gently, nudged her mind with his, merging into her consciousness. Rose released a soft gasp as she felt what could only be described as his presence slip into her own thoughts. He was there. He was actually there within her mind. Rose had to actively focus on drawing air into her lungs. Otherwise, this experience which defied comparison would override her ability to breathe.

"It's okay, Rose. We're going to take this slow," the Doctor mentally calmed her, his voice a whispering echo in her mind as he sensed her tension ease just slightly. The Doctor had to put intense effort into focusing his own thoughts on this task and not get utterly lost in the sheer bliss encompassing him from being joined on this level with Rose once more. Even if it was on a diminished scale from what they shared when fully bonded, it was still enough to undo him if he didn't stay focused. He had missed his connection to her so, so deeply. His desolate mind literally ached for hers.

Rose began to feel unexpectedly at ease as his presence simply waited, allowing her to adjust to this experience. Having someone else actually within her mind should feel completely unsettling, but Rose found it to be the opposite. Her mind had been feeling so jumbled these past few days, but he seemed to impart to her a sense of soothing peace from within – like a comforting embrace. Though much more...intimate.

Once the Doctor perceived she was beginning to feel at ease with him, he slowly began the process of categorizing her most recent memories that were still intact – the ones from four years prior.

Rose sensed him beginning to move about. It felt like a sensation of inner warmth, drifting through the center of her being like a gentle breeze, and if she concentrated on it, she could almost make out his essence as a silver glow within her mind's eye.

As the Doctor proceeded to move through her memories, he got a little too close to one from a few years previous before he had known her, and he suddenly found a door slammed shut on him. "I won't go through there. It's okay," he assured her. The Doctor didn't have to look behind the door to know which memory it contained. Rose had already shared this with him. It was the painful memory of her time with Jimmy Stone. If anything could have been forgotten, the Doctor wished this would have been it.

Rose let any lingering anxiety ease, taking deep breaths outwardly as she relaxed inwardly. With her past, intact memories identified, the Doctor then moved towards the ones that had sustained the damage. He was able to detect the area of her memories that Rose had not been able to distinguish through the distortion. As he drew near, he was able to guide Rose's focus to them. They were like a distorted mosaic of mismatched pieces, tangled and strewn. Sorting through them would be like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The Doctor was hopeful none the less because they were still there – not wiped out completely. Their condition was extremely fragile, however, and working to restore and unravel them would have to be done with the utmost care.

Though the Doctor could see this area more precisely, for Rose it was more like a vague sense of static. The harder she tried to focus in on it, the more difficult it became. The Doctor perceived Rose's frustrated thoughts as she strained in the effort. "I...I can't..."

"Shhh," he soothed. "It's alright. Don't try too hard. It's not something that can be forced. For now, just let yourself become aware of this area." The Doctor could sense that Rose's mind was already beginning to tire from the experience. This had been enough for now. Slight progress had still been made. By drawing her focus to the location of those jumbled memories, a little of the haze had begun to lift. He had hope that accessing them would gradually become easier.

Just before withdrawing, there was one last thing the Doctor sought to examine now that he was in the position to do so. He journeyed to an area of Rose's mind which lay outside her realm of cognizance. Moving to the very center of her subconscious, he observed a luminous golden essence encompassing a tiny, glowing tendril within. The baby's link to Rose was undamaged, and at this point was still so small, especially so now that it was no longer heightened by their bond, that it remained outside of Rose's conscious awareness.

Held in captivation and unable to refrain, the Doctor drew closer, awed by this infinitesimal presence. It was the first mental glimpse he'd had of his child. His child. The idea still left him astounded. The Doctor sent out the tiniest of brushes and, nearly taking his breath away, felt a whisper of a touch in return as a wave of love consumed him the moment he sensed it. Its strength was barely a wisp, yet it would have had the power to bring him to his knees had he been standing. Never before had he been so wholly consumed by love.

Despite feeling like he could spend an eternity right in this moment of time, the Doctor knew he could not remain much longer or this would become too much for Rose, so he forced himself to pull back. He carefully withdrew then, easing from Rose's mind as gently as he had entered. His fingers slid from her temples, but he kept his eyes closed for another brief moment, trying to rein in his intense emotions from the experience. When he focused back on Rose, her eyes were just beginning to flutter open.

That last moment might have been outside of her awareness, but what Rose did experience had been enough to leave anyone speechless. This moment could have now felt highly awkward for her, but it didn't. This man had essentially walked among her thoughts, yet it didn't feel intrusive or prying. It felt...well, she wasn't really quite sure how it felt since she didn't have anything even remotely like this to compare it to. But it was undeniably, if not strangely, pleasant.

"Well, that was...that was certainly...different," Rose eventually spoke, unable to think of any adequate words capable of describing the experience.

The Doctor breathed out, managing to find his voice as he held his own emotions in check and focused on Rose's physical state. "How do you feel now? That wasn't too much for you, was it? Do you have any dizziness or pain or..."

"No. No, I feel fine. And...maybe somehow just a little more clear." Rose closed her eyes briefly before focusing back on his. "That area with those...those jumbled thoughts I could sense – those are what I have to work on, aren't they?" she questioned. The prospect seemed daunting.

He nodded. "Yes. But the fact that those memories are still there at all, damaged as they may be, is still a very good sign. It means there's a chance they can be restored. They're very fragile, though. That's why we have to take this slowly and carefully. Too much strain and they could be further impaired or totally lost. This was enough for today."

Rose felt disappointed that more couldn't be done right away, but progress was progress. She felt more hopeful than before in the possibility that those memories could eventually return. She needed to know everything, because something told Rose those missing four years of her life had been monumental.